Re: Exception base class

From:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Kr=FCgler?= <daniel.kruegler@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:41:37 CST
Message-ID:
<ff69fcc9-bdb3-4cc9-9d32-1bd689205c0d@g4g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>
On 23 Mrz., 00:20, sp...@pobox.com (Michael Herstine
<sp...@pobox.com>) wrote:

Lars Schouw wrote:

Hi,

I want to construct an exception base class that is easy to use.
Ideally I want to be able to throw exceptions in one liners like this:
throw Exception("string1" + "string2 <number>", 5.0);

I can use boost::format but don't want to use any boost in my code.
Would look like this.. a two liner.
string err = str( boost::format("test %s%") % "some more into");
throw Exception("string1" + "string2 <number>", 5.0);

<snip>


Lars, I do this:

class my_exception: public std::runtime_error
{
public:
     // Enumerated list of error codes...
     enum Code {
         code1, code2, ...
     };
     // Template struct that just exists to map Code-s to distinct types
     template < Code CODE >
     struct C {
         static const Code x = CODE;
     };

     // Now I can overload my ctors on the error code
     my_exception( const C<code1>&, const std::string &s1,
                   const std::string &s2, double x );
     my_exception( const C<code2>&, int x, int y );
     ...

};

This lets you throw in one line, albeit at the cost of some ugly
syntax:

throw my_exception( my_exception::C< my_exception::code1 >( ),
                     "string1", "string2", 5.0 );

but then...


Apart from the rather recommended suggestion to have
a look at the boost.exception library, it doesn't look
like a good idea to me to use the mapping template
as a public API. Instead I would suggest that you define
user-friendly "tag" types, e.g.

struct code1_t{};
struct code2_t{};
....

which constants:

const code1_t code1 = code1_t{};
const code2_t code1 = code2_t{};

which are the API. Then either prepare overloaded
c'tor of your exception class (or provide factory
functions), like so:

      my_exception( code1_t, const std::string &s1,
                    const std::string &s2, double x );
      my_exception( code2_t, int x, int y );
      ...

which are easy to use like this:

throw my_exception( code1, "string1", "string2", 5.0 );

Now what is the template C good for? In fact, you
will probably reduce the risk to assign the wrong
enum value to a given tag type, therefore you define
for internal mapping purposes this template:

template <class>
struct C; // undefined

template <>
struct C<code1_t> {
   static const Code x = my_exception::code1;
};

template <>
struct C<code2_t> {
   static const Code x = my_exception::code2;
};

....

HTH & Greetings from Bremen,

Daniel Kr?gler

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